I'm an unpublished writer, a sports fan and I make my money pushing bits around. This blog is filled leftist anti-Christian anti-Conservative propoganda, pop culture rants and overanalysis of various goings-on in professional sports.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Yankees Yankees Yankees

In the "Oh shit" moment of the week, the Yankees have opened up discussions with Brian Giles. Why they want to add a 15 HR guy is beyond me. Crosby will give them that for $10M less.

Being the free agent market is so paltry, why don't the Yanks do something different this year? Instead of adding on ridiculous contracts for players who used to be good, why don't they start dumping players who never will be that good again? Mussina, R Johnson, Sheffield, Giambi, Pavano, J Wright: kick them to the curb. With no interesting free agents in circulation, they should be able to dump any and all of these guys.

And I'll tack on another name: Alex Rodriguez. Here's a quotable from espn.com:

"A-Rod was vastly more productive in the Yankees' blowout wins than he was in games where a hit either way was the difference between winning and losing.

In the 20 games each of their teams won by six or more runs, A-Rod hit .549, had an OPS of 1.793 and racked up 46 of his 130 RBI (35 percent). Ortiz, on the other hand, batted .277, had an OPS almost 800 points lower than A-Rod's (.999) and drove in only 33 runs (22 percent of his overall total).

But in close games (games that either went to extra innings or were decided by one or two runs in regulation), the numbers look a whole lot different.

In those games -- and each team played exactly 65 of them -- A-Rod batted only .243, had an OPS of .805 and drove in just 38 runs (29 percent). Ortiz, meanwhile, clearly tapped some mysterious force that made him even better in moments like that -- batting .321, running up an OPS of 1.116 and knocking in nearly a run a game (62 -- or 42 percent of his overall total)."

Someday ARod will come around in the clutch, I suspect, much the same way Barry Bonds has, at or around 100 postseason at bats. But I'm sick of watching him flail when the Yanks need him. We don't have time to wait for him to grow up. So ship him to the Astros, to the Cardinals, to the Braves, somewhere you can land a legit #1 or #2 guy.